How to do a `float: left` with no wrapping?
I have a container box1 that has a certain width (which might change depending on its content). That box contains box2 which has a fixed width (it could be an icon). Next to box2, I have box3 with some text. I want the text to use all the space available to the right of box2. With the HTML pasted below, you get:
So far so good. If the text gets longer, it doesn't wrap around box2 (which is what I want), however, it doesn't make box1 grow, which is my problem. You'll tell me "hey, if you made box3 a position: absolute, how could you expect it to make box1 grow?". Well, I don't but then, how can I get box3 to show next to box2, use all the horizontal space available, and make box1 grow if necessary? (Do I need to say that I'd like this work on IE6 onward, and to avoid using a table?)
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
<style type="text/css">
#box1 { position: relative }
#box3 { position: absolute; left: 2.5em; right: .5em; top: .5em }
/* Styling */
#box1 { background: #ddd; padding: 1em 0.5em; width: 20em }
#box2 { background: #999; padding: .5em; }
#box3 { background: #bbb; padding: .5em; }
body { font-family: sans-serif }
</style>
<script type="text/javascript">
</script>
</head>
<body>
<div id="box1">
<span id="box2">2</span>
<span id="box3">3</span>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Answer
You need box 3 to be a block level element, so use display:block and then toss in an overflow:hidden in conjunction with float-ing box 2:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
<style type="text/css">
#box1 { }
#box2 { float:left; }
#box3 { display:block;overflow:hidden; }
/* Styling */
#box1 { background: #ddd; padding: 1em 0.5em; width: 20em }
#box2 { background: #999; padding: .5em; }
#box3 { background: #bbb; padding: .5em; }
body { font-family: sans-serif }
</style>
<script type="text/javascript">
</script>
<title>How to do a `float: left` with no wrapping?</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="box1">
<span id="box2">2</span>
<span id="box3">3<br />3<br />3<br />3<br />3<br />3<br />3<br />3<br />3<br />3<br />3<br />3<br /></span>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Amazing all the things overflow:hidden can do :D